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Holiday Downloads: We're All a Bunch of Mobile App Addicts

Paul Lilly
Jan 03, 2012

Page 1 of 10

We imagine Santa did his fair share of grumbling this year as he reminisced about the days when kids asked for toy trains and dolls. The current generation is more interested in smartphones and tablets, which would explain why the last week of the 2011 saw more iOS and Android device activations than any previous week of the year. That kind of strong finish should have app developers smiling from ear to ear.

Using some slightly fuzzy math and perhaps an assumption or two thrown in for good measure, Flurry, a mobile application analytics firm, reckons mobile users downloaded a record breaking 242 million iOS and Android applications combined on Christmas Day. And during the so-called "power week," which runs from December 25 to December 31, Flurry estimates 1.2 billion applications were downloaded, helped in large part by over 20 million new iOS and Android device activations during the same time period.

The U.S. is home to the most app addicts and led the way with 509 million mobile downloads during the last week of 2011. No other country came close, including China, which was a distant second with 'only' 99 million downloads.

"Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one-billion-download-barrier per week will become more common-place. While iOS and Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent," Flurry said in a
blog post
.

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